Guest post by Amanda Rose
Founder, Twestival

Note from Beth Kanter: Last week, I wrote a reflection on a CNET article called “Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0,” musing about the solution. A number folks offers some insights in the comments or on Twitter, including Amanda. I invited her to share her thoughts about cause fatigue and scaling as she launches Twestival Local.

Cause fatigue is something I think about daily; particularly going into our second Twestival in September. I’ve felt a huge mix of pressure and enthusiasm to launch another one from previous organizers and cities who missed it the first time around. I didn’t feel like the Twitter community could handle another cause infused global campaign on the scale of Twestival so soon. My gut told me to think locally and use this international momentum and inspire people to shine a spotlight on a local cause, or a cause that a community would get behind. Where Twestival Global focused all of its energy on one cause, on one day; Twestival Local, taking place the weekend of 10-13 September 2009, has the potential to impact hundreds of causes.

Volunteers around the world feel empowered when asked to use their skills, not only to bring people together at an event, but contribute to something positive. Which is why Twestival Local hopes to challenge city organizers with two important questions with their selected cause:

(1) What will the not-for-profit do with the funds raised?

I think too many times people are raising money without a specific objective in mind. Sure $5,000 sounds like a fantastic fundraising goal, but what if I told you by meeting that target, a local cause would be able to launch an evening food program for the homeless, or make much needed repairs to a home for abandoned girls and boys. People are more likely to relate and give to something they can follow up on and social media allows causes and those supporting to do just that.

(2) In addition to fundraising, what are all the ways your city plans to work with the not-for-profit?

For me, Twestival is more than just about events in cities raising money for a cause. There is a huge opportunity here to bridge the gap between donors and volunteers. Twestival teams around the world are encouraged to think of other ways they can contribute to their selected cause; provide social media training, arrange for a local company to donate products and services, or leverage Twestival to strategize and create awareness.

You wouldn’t know it, but charity: water had very little Twitter presence before Twestival, compared to the way they use it now. Founder Scott Harrison was the only one on Twitter and I’m pretty sure he’d admit that he didn’t really ‘get it’. We sent in some social media heavy-hitters from the Twestival NYC team to give them some free training and now a running joke around the charity: water office is that even volunteers must go through a little Twitter initiation. Causes should recognize specific skills of volunteers as a valuable commodity, the same way it does with cash donations. After working with charity: water on Twestival, I now have a personal vested interest in seeing them meet their goals financial and otherwise.

I have always believed in the power of ‘the ripple effect’. I know that Twestival has inspired causes that otherwise wouldn’t have considered investing time in social media. It is my hope that with Twestival Local, even nominated causes which aren’t selected as a final recipient feel an impact in awareness.

So, can we have a Twestival every week? In my opinion, no. Twestival involves more than just tweeting; they are physical events happening around the world under short timescales. It is also not organized by a cause directly, but by volunteers who took it upon themselves to get involved.

Is the approach of Twestival sustainable? Absolutely. Eventually, the masses will come to realize that Twitter is just a great communications tool. The other fantastic thing about Twitter and certain other social media sites is this ability to develop an online community and empower them to evangelize for you, which can be extremely powerful. Hosting events for fundraising is nothing new. Communicating and engaging with potential donors and volunteers in a creative way is nothing new. To get it ‘right’ is another thing – but there are lessons learned from Twestival that can carry over to even the smallest of causes.

Recently, my best friend Alyson (www.alysonwoloshyn.com) was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. I mention this only because my life is now directly impacted by cancer in ways I could not have predicted a few months ago. I don’t have a Livestrong band on my Twitter avatar because it is the cool thing to do. I have it because it is something I believe in and have a reason to support. Ultimately people are going to support what resonates with them and how you use social media to reach out can make all the difference.

Causes thinking longer term with social media should recognize that there is no magic recipe, no guarantee of online global fundraisers raising over $250k like Twestival. But, what is exciting to consider and continues to keep me experimenting with social media is how it evens the playing field. Thanks to social media, causes can now have direct and personal impact with their audience in ways that were once costly and ineffective. This much I know for sure.

Related

Note from Beth: I wrote several detailed posts about Twestival while it was unfolding and aggregated other posts as well.

• Beth Kanter, “Look Out, Here Comes Everybody To Raise Money for charity:water on Twitter
• Beth Kanter, Are fundraising groundswells an opportunity for mass distraction or a major opportunity?
• Beth Kanter, Interview with Amanda Rose: A Reflection on Twestival
• Entry-Level Living, Reflecting on Social Media Fundraising
• Mashable, Twestival Raises Over $250,000
• Guardian, Twestival Raises $250,000 and Expectations
Mashable, Twestival Social Media for Social Change
• Miriam Kagan, Twestival

Posts about earlier charity:water and Twitter efforts:

• Paul Young’s Reflection on his September Birthday Campaign
• Pistachio’s experiment in micro fundraising
• September Birthdays on charity:water

This post originally appeared on Beth’s Blog.

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Tim Ferriss, author of the best-seller The Four-Hour Work Week, appeared today via uStream at the Inbound Marketing Summit during the session “How to Create a Worldwide Social Media Phenomenon.”

He took questions from the audience, and I asked how he decides which causes to support.

It wasn’t an idle question. Ferriss has become a remarkably adept advocate for philanthropic causes in a startlingly short time. He has successfully made use of social media tools to raise thousands of dollars to build schools in Vietnam, libraries in Nepal and India, and most recently, to help thousands of classrooms in the U.S. obtain basic classroom supplies. (Source: WalletPop)

Tim singled out three organizations and initiatives as exemplars of philanthropy in the age of Web 2.0:

• Donorschoose.org, the remarkable organization founded by Charles Best (I did a video interview with him Monday and hope to post it soon). Ferriss, who sits on the organization’s board, said the ability for users to select the specific educational causes they support and to receive tangible feedback are key drivers of its success.

• Roomtoread is a global organization that has established more than 7,000 libraries in the developing world since 2000.

• Charity: water, the nonprofit that was the beneficiary of the Twestival event in 205 cities, is representative of a new breed of charitable organizations, he said. Some of these groups have smartly begun to set up an administrative structure in which 100 percent of donated funds go directly to the cause, with a separate fund, generated through other means (such as a small add-on to support the group’s operations), paying for administration.

Seeing the first-hand results of your donation — whether it’s a Google Earth shot of the new drinking well drilled in Ethiopia for $5,000 or the plaque on the front door of a new school built in Vietnam — is a powerful incentive for individuals to participate in the culture of giving.

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Mobile giving via SMS in the United States and many other parts of the world, has been out of reach because of high carrier charges — up to 50% of a donation would go to the telcom — unacceptable to most charities.

But this has changed in the last two years. Mobile donation campaigns in the United States that go through the Mobile Giving Foundation are not subject to the high carrier fees. The Mobile Giving Foundation charges a smaller percentage fee — currently 10%. As a result, in 2008 the field of mobile giving in the U.S. attracted the attention by organizations large and small, including by such brands as UNICEF, the Salvation Army, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

in England, there is also talk about establishing an entity similar to the Mobile Giving Foundation that would negotiate a no-fee arrangement with the operators and vet charities for SMS giving campaigns.

How does mobile giving work?

The most-often talked about method of mobile fundraising and the one deployed by most mobile fundraising campaigns today are premium SMS campaigns (SMS refers to text messaging). Premium SMS fundraising campaigns were initially deployed to much publicity for disaster relief such as for Katrina victims and those of the California Wildfires. Customers of participating mobile carriers could send a text message to the short code “2HELP” (24357), activated during times of disasters, to make a tax-deductible donation of $5 to the American Red Cross’ relief efforts. 100% of thew donation benefiited the Red Cross as carriers wauved their fees. Now mobile fundraising shortcodes are available to all nonprofits, not just during the disasters.

Short codes are often referred to as the “mobile URL” — short, five digit codes or even vanity codes that customers can text to receive information or participate in a campaign. These donations via premium SMS then appear on customers’ monthly bills or are debited from prepaid cell phone account balances.

The Mobile Giving Foundation in the U.S. currently operates ten donation shortcodes and has enrolled over 65 nonprofits in its program. Each nonprofit has to go through an application process to qualify and then works with one of the mobile vendors that the Mobile Giving Foundation has approved, following strict guidelines.

Approval and then receiving the actual donations is not a quick process. Currently, there is a wait time of at least a month to get approved by the Foundation and the carriers. Donations solicited via mobile minus fees are collected and forwarded to the nonprofit within 90 days.

The size of mobile giving in the United States

Mobile giving via premium SMS is still small despite some valiant efforts. In 2008, the first full year of mobile fundraising in the United States, mobile giving crossed only half a million dollars. Not much, given the ubiquity of mobile phones in the US. But, as James Eberhard of Mobile Accord, a mobile vendor, points out, donations exceeded those raised on the Internet for the first year in 1997, when proceeds were a reported $300,000.

Eberhard cautions that “most nonprofit mobile campaigns are brand awareness campaigns right now rather than a direct response mechanism for an organization.” He points out that the current limit of $5 per SMS is too low an amount to yield much revenue. Nonprofits may furthermore fear that they cannibalize donors with a low mobile contribution when that same person could be giving more online.

But there is a growing number of campaigns — and lots of experimentation. For example, some of the more interesting campaigns used mobiles to draw attention to their brand, or used mobiles as part of a one-time holiday campaign. The Salvation Army in several cities, solicited mobile donations in its kettle ringing campaigns during the holidays. UNICEF deployed a similar strategy, soliciting donations via SMS during its Trick-or-treat for UNICEF campaign during Halloween. Both campaigns sought to capitalize on the just-in-time giving mobiles enable, though arguably it’s still much easier for donors to throw a few dollars into the kettle.

And then there are celebrity campaigns — Alicia Keys, most notably, who aggressively deployed and marketed mobile giving for her charity Keep a Child Alive. Keys included specific appeal for mobile donations during a concert tour last year and prominently displays a mobile giving short code for a $5 donation on the charity’s web site. According to Mobile Accord, the vendor for the campaign, 8,000 donors gave $5 via SMS during the concert tour, for a total of $40,000 for the charity.

These are still tiny numbers in comparison to the $10 billion in online donations purported to have been given online in 2007, and even smaller in comparison to the $300 billion in charitable giving overall.

But when taking into consideration the growth trends in mobile use and texting not just in the younger demographic but in the over-35 group, mobile giving via SMS is a channel nonprofits ought to at least consider. Mobile subscribers in the U.S. between 35 and 54, according to Nielsen, a rating firm, see especially explosive growth in SMS use: in 2007, just 37 percent of them regularly sent text-messages, while in 2008 that number grew to 59 percent. There are currently 270 million mobile subscribers in the US, according to industry group CTIA, all of which have the ability to send and receive text messages.

What works in mobile giving?

As the much-lauded Obama mobile campaign showed, mobile marketing is effective when deployed in a way that reinforces marketing messages through other channels and takes into consideration what is uniquely valuable about messaging via mobile phones. As good communication staff and fundraisers know, reinforcing messages that build a relationship with a donor, that are timely and urgent, and that have specific goals tend to be effective. Mobile messaging can play a role in well-thought-out campaigns and provides another, potentially very effective channel for reaching a target audience.

Share Our Strength, the national organization focused on child hunger, recently launched a text donation challenge — an effective way to reach new donors. Says Chuck Scofield, Share Our Strength’s VP for Development, “AT&T came to us as part of President Obama’s call to service.” Share our Strength and AT&T then partnered on a text-to-donate challenge: Donors who text in “SHARE” to 20222 on their mobile device for a $5 donation will be matched by AT&T for a total contribution up to $100,000. At the same time, as Scofield points out, Share our Strength also leads, together with AT&Ts employees a nationwide food drive to benefit community food banks in 32 cities. The food drive has so far generated 20,000 pounds of food alone, the mobile texting challenge is ongoing until March 1.

Share Our Strength did extensive outreach on blogger networks, and through Twitter. Says Suzy Twohig, Director of Donor Relations: “This is an opportunity for us to reach out to a new constituency. Our donors are giving more this year in response to the challenging times and for us, mobile giving is complementary to our other forms of giving.”

According to industry insiders, there may also be an inccrease in the premium SMS limit from $5 to $10 as well as SMS monthly recurring donations. At that $120-year price point, even if each SMS donation would have to be approved by the donor every month with a reply confirmation, mobile giving via SMS is beginning to look more lucrative for organizations than just a one-time $5 donation.

The hope is, according to Eberhard, that “if you can get a donor committed, even with a relatively small amount, it shows their involvement and can be tapped in the future.”

As usual in this field, there is little public data available, and most nonprofit campaigns have not been very strategic in converting their mobile donors or even activists into longer-term supporters, as we have often pointed out.

Eberhard also points out that most people do not know they can give via a text message, requiring still a large amount of donor education. He cautions that mobile revenue is not going to happen overnight for nonprofits but rightly notes that the trends are pointing in the right direction.

A new blog, Mobile Giving Insider, run by mobile vendor Mobile Commons, is keeping track of developments in this space, though it is currently only focused on premium SMS as a fundraising mechanism.

Going beyond SMS

But SMS is not the only way on which people can give. Mobile Commons, for example, has an application — mConnect — that is deployed by advocacy campaigns for legislative call-in campaigns. Planned Parenthood recently used the tool for a thank-you call to President Obama.

Here is how is works: An organization sends a text message including a phone number to its mobile list. The receiver replies CALL via text or simply dials the indicated number and is connected to a customized voice recording. This could be talking points or an overview of the situation — or a pitch to give. The caller is then forwarded on to a destination number, such as a legislative switchboard, or a phone bank.

Mobile Commons powered such a call-to-give for then-presidential candidate John Edwards who used his list of cellphone numbers to direct constituents via voicemail and text message to a live phone bank. Donors in this scenario then make a donation on the phone with a credit card rather than via a $5 text message.

Another tool, Twitter, has also been much in the news lately as a way for mobile peer-to-peer and micro-fundraising. Twitter, a microblogging service accessible via mobile phone or on the web, allows users to post 140-character messages to a list of followers. Nonprofits have been quick to take up Twitter as a way to get their messages out and converse with constituents. During a recent ‘tweetsgiving,’ an enterprising nonprofit raised $11K in just a few days through its network of supporters and peers to build a classroom in a Tanzanian school.

Twestival, an impromptu, all-volunteer-led series of events on the same day in the United States and the UK organized via Twitter raised a reported $250,000 for Charity: Water.

Share our Strength, through its outreach on Twitter for the mobile donation campaign, was mentioned on a prominent blog which resulted in a $1,000 matching grant from yet another reader, creating a ripple effect of attention and money. Says Scofield: “Our mobile campaign and outreach was opening the door for further engagement.

Though not strictly mobile giving, Twitter and other social networks such as Facebook are yet another channel for nonprofits to build networks reachable via mobile to turn people into supporters and donors of an organization.

There is still much to be explored in this multi-channel universe and the organizations that are thinking creatively and innovatively about mobile giving but it is clear that this channel is going to take off as people get used to the idea and nonprofits become more clever in integrating mobiles into their strategies.

A few more examples

A nice example of mobile-inspired giving recently is the campaign by Stand Up for Kids, a nonprofit working to alleviate kid and teen homelessness. The organization teamed up with Virgin Mobile’s Generation RE campaign and American Eagle Outfitters. A user texts in “karma” to shortcode 68450 and a piece of clothing is donated to a homeless kid on the texter’s behalf by American Eagle. The donor can also text in his or her name to appear on the Stand Up for Kids website. The campaign did a number of things right: It was a great use of texting to team up with a company to make a donation on the donor’s behalf AND build a mobile list in the process. The medium is right for the group that is appealing to a younger audience that feels empathetic to teen homelessness. Even though the organization’s website clearly cries “poor nonprofit,” the Karma page is cool enough. Streaming the donor names makes people feel engaged and recognized.

Virgin has a text2donate program, too — you can give $5 to the nonprofit itself by texting “DONATE” to 7845, but it seems Stand Up for Kids is too humble to mention that anywhere on their site. So, if you read this, have a heart. Donate $5 by texting DONATE to 7845 to alleviate child and teen homelessness, and then give a kid some clothes from American Eagle by texting in “karma” to 68450 – which will cost you nothing but the cost of the SMS.

One of my perennial favorites, even though it is by now a few years old, is a campaign by Meir Panim, a network of soup kitchens in Israel. It ran an “SMS for Lunch” campaign, a promotional interactive campaign: On their website a boy was seen, facing an empty plate. The site invited you to donate through SMS. The moment the system received the SMS, the banner changed: the plate filled and the boy smiled. The amount of the donation — each SMS — covers the cost of one meal for a child.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s charity raised $85,000 with the cooperation of Zain, a South African mobile operator. Using Mandela’s 90th birthday last July as the ‘call to give’, well-wishers from around the world could text in a birthday wish and make a donation at the same time. Shared and dedicated premium SMS codes were set up in over 20 countries around the world including the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Australia, Spain and Germany as well as many African nations,making this one of the biggest premium SMS fundraising initiatives launched.

Photo courtesy Nelson Mandela Foundation

This entry originally appeared at MobileActive.org.

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